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Had a close up encounter with a guard yesterday in FC 2, meant to roll to my knife to stab him but instead rolled to grenades and pressed fire without checking. Due to proximity of the man it bounced off his forehead, knocked him out, i screamed and then ran away.

Playing Escape Goat following the sale on GOG. I've completed just over 30%, and I think I prefer Shuggy, but on the other hand I might actually finish Escape Goat (the normal levels at least), thanks to a lower requirement for precise timing. I like the pixel art, and the puzzles are head-scratching but generally not that difficult so far.

It's quite enjoyable, although I have a few reservations. I really don't like the new crafting system. I felt the node system in DS 1 and 2 worked perfectly well; the one in DS3 just overcomplicates things without really adding much. Also I don't like that the game adds human enemies to the mix.

Mostly it's still the Dead Space I like to play though. The necromorph combat is nice and meaty, and the zero-G sections remain my favourite parts of the series. If there was a game based purely on being an engineer on a spaceship, and moving to different parts of the ship inside and out repairing stuff, and set in the Dead Space engine, I would buy it in heartbeat.

I picked up the Brave New World expansion for Civ V for cheap, so I decided to finally play it, since getting it free with XCOM ages ago. It's a little frustrating when I'm encountering early civs who have two or three cities, workers upgrading stuff and reasonable armies when I still have one of the above and another only starting to build. I'm on the Prince skill level, so hopefully I'm simply making poorly optimised choices.

Still, it's getting more interesting as I go. There are a lot of systems that interact in neat ways. It's actually backwards from most Civ games, which grab me at the start but lose me as the game goes on.

Playing Game of thrones, which is a story based RPG with so many twist, turns and surprise deaths, that even though I enjoy it and it's RPG mechanics (both leveling and conversation are quite well done), I'm feeling more and more that everything I do is pointless. I understand that the feeling of being a pawn in a bigger game is one of the main points in GoT, but in an RPG I do expect to have a bit more information before making a decision.

There are too many cases when I am given the choice of sparing some one's life and by doing so I just have to wait and see if the result will be a helpful hand are a biting of the ass. Sometimes the "surprise" is utterly counter intuitive and seems to be just there for the sake of shocking (and angering) the player.

Otherwise I'm quite enjoying the story itself (very good spin-off for the books/TV show), the conversations are well done and the RPG and fighting elements are also not bad at all. The engine could use some fine tuning - there are numerous bugs and the more crowded fights are very difficult to handle due small FOV and confusing character design (everyone looks the. Just like in the TV show).

Had a close up encounter with a guard yesterday in FC 2, meant to roll to my knife to stab him but instead rolled to grenades and pressed fire without checking. Due to proximity of the man it bounced off his forehead, knocked him out, i screamed and then ran away.

heh. Brilliant. I didn't know you could knock people out (bit redundant with grenades, perhaps).

Playing Europa Universalis IV as Persia, still. I left The Mamluks alone for a while, which prompted Yemen (rather large in my case) to invade them on two fronts - in Africa and on the Arabian peninsula. That gave me the room to take care of Baluchistan, which now just has two provinces left, though unfortunately not before Yemen snatched on of their provinces. I now have direct land access to my allies in India, and spend the next few months taking care of their rebels for them.

A similar fortunate development occurred in the North. Russia and The Ottomans went to war, and after a while, Russia offered me an Alliance! That quickly proved it's usefulness when Nogai declared war on me, and was promptly swept off the map by horde's of Russian armies.

Next target: Yemen, but they've allied themselves with The Ottomans, who I'd prefer not to fight.

"He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to
the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free". ~ Luke 4:18

Haha. Yeah. I remember that. took a long break from BG2.... now hooked again.
@arona
don't have the shield but beholders I could fight without cheesing. still fireball offscreen was used often.
but mind flayers are most annoying because they can two shot Minsc. He actually died after killing the Brain cause I didn't notice he got hit.

Twelve hours now into Stalker: Call of Prypjat and finally reached the name giving area. The first fights with Monolith fighters are over and I got the Gauss Rifle repaired and ready. I explored Zaton and the Jupiter Area thoroughly but was not able to find fine tools to further upgrade my weapons and SEVO suit. Maybe I was missing something or I will hopefully find it in Prypjat.

It can be very difficult to find all sets of tools, they're sometimes hidden in quite unusual locations. I ended up looking it up in a walkthrough, because I couldn't find some toolsets for the life of me.

Twelve hours now into Stalker: Call of Prypjat and finally reached the name giving area. The first fights with Monolith fighters are over and I got the Gauss Rifle repaired and ready. I explored Zaton and the Jupiter Area thoroughly but was not able to find fine tools to further upgrade my weapons and SEVO suit. Maybe I was missing something or I will hopefully find it in Prypjat.

I’d say the main things that I get from Far Cry 2 are the nastiness and complexity of Civil war/war by proxy, the necessary brutality of staying alive in a combat situation, the sheer terrible power of guns, and the futility and wearisomeness of constant violence punctuated by bursts of adrenaline pumping excitement .

Far Cry 2 has it’s issues-although not many in my opinion-but it achieves all of those things to me through little more than tone and mechanics, without narrative lecturing or cut scenes. It’s a tremendously pure and constant experience that relentlessly brings home said truths through what you see and what you do. The given narrative are just the bones which are fleshed out through the mechanics, as opposed to most games which give an exhaustive narrative and then vaguely relate it to gamey shit you have to go and do now, cos that's the game bit where you play rather than watch.

Far Cry 2 imparts its message through the mechanics, not in spite of them. It’s one of the few games I’ve played which offers any plausible explanation as to why you should just be repeatedly shooting people or avoiding getting shot by them.

Bioshock games are sort of the antithesis to this. They present tone and aesthetic and implied narrative to a wonderful degree but pair it with a form of gameplay progression which is utterly unrelated to it. Rather than the two working in concert, as with Far Cry 2, they are completely at odds with each other. In fact I think it was the creator of Far Cry 2 who coined the term “ludonarrative dissonance” expressly in relation to this. And given the manner in which Far Cry pairs narrative and mechanics to be essentially one and the same thing, you can see why.

You can have fully fleshed out narratives and still have the mechanics serve it aswell; the Far Cry 2 way is not the only way to make a good gaming narrative. Something like the Witcher 2 is a good example, or the Saints Row series from 2 onwards-accept the narrative extensions of what your game is and just build that into the story, and all is well.

But Bioschock is at pains to present you as narratively vulnerable whilst giving you the arsenal of both a wizard and a developing nation to fight people with wrenches and pistols. Why am I creeping around Rapture/Columbia when I have nothing to fear from any of its inhabitants? Or, a similar issue-why could I kill that splicer with a wrench ten minutes ago but these ones can take about 5 grenades to the face? What’s the lore behind that one? Answer-there isn’t one, because it’s just about “levelling up” baddies to make the game harder.